Contraindication
Unfortunately, I enjoy blasphemy.
My nightmares will kill me before God does.
What is a nightmare but what God does
to the trees, hiding paper in their pith?
Were I a tree with paper in my pith
I would not miss my chance to be useful.
Elegant as a plume, my chance to be useful
is no bigger than my need to be dead.
Though God is bigger than my need to be dead
I am, in all, the scratch he cannot reach.
I am, in all, the scratch I cannot reach
Because the ache is wider than my life.
Lord, your grace is wider than my life—
Unfortunately, I enjoy blasphemy.
Golden Shovel: O Honey
—after Danez Smith’s little prayer
I am still, at best, a seared thing: let
us kiss, nonetheless. Somehow we will evade the ruin
& its tendrils. The days, devoted to end-
ing the oft-repeated malediction, throbbing here
in our wounds. Instead of a force, let
us be an admonition. We will never kneel to him,
true, & this large blue vessel sailing the heart will find
other ways to be loved. O honey,
a father is not the safest saddle. Where
is your dread, your glare? I am standing in there—
where his curses used to bounce off your shoulder blade. He was
a terror & I am trying my best, for once
not to be one. I haven’t, you see, always been a
student of kindness—I used to seek my slaughter
until someone stuffed me with Zoloft, & your kisses let
me into ecstasy. I hope no one looks him
in the eye ever again, I often say, as I enter
my wishes into God’s big, black, invisible ears—the
gist being, the only prey I’m willing to be is a lion’s.
Portrait as Jacob Shifting God’s Hip
Insurrection, you say — I say, intimacy.
Stubborn splinter, I am collecting dust
right here, in the scuffle:
a loyal thing. In my little way
I dismantle my God, pleat myself
into him. Yes, the spear entered the side
and came out glistening. I am proud
to be an addition to the legend.
My limp is the clearest evidence
I was touched
I just want to say I am thankful
& jealous
of the disciple who kissed
his cheek
though, thinking again
I do not envy his end.
Chokehold
a little boy, I sang to birds
begging
to have my nails painted with their droppings
I sang pulled my nails with pliers & piled
them—bloody things—year after year by my window
waiting for a smidgen. this too is sweetness:
the lust for sheen a child exchanging its proteins
for beauty. somewhere in the world as I
write, gravity is tilting a body off a rooftop a
dog is drowning in a pool a garpike is gobbling plastic
the earth rotates into deficiency but you
with supple limbs hold my neck in a chokehold
say, you want me to sing you songs as I once
did birds. I tell you, I am a man now & all I have
are grunts. You nod
tighten your grip…
somewhere
in the world, a child is opening a book
for the first time mistaking q for p
& the mother smiling at its first mistake
the way I smiled after our first kiss…
***
Author photo courtesy of author
